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Other publication in scientific journal - Peer-reviewed, 2022

Subtle structures with not-so-subtle functions: A data set of arthropod constructs and their host plants

Pereira, Cassio Cardoso; Novais, Samuel; Barbosa, Milton; Negreiros, Daniel; Goncalves-Souza, Thiago; Roslin, Tomas; Marquis, Robert; Marino, Nicholas; Novotny, Vojtech; Orivel, Jerome; Sui, Shen; Aires, Gustavo; Antoniazzi, Reuber; Dattilo, Wesley; Breviglieri, Crasso; Busse, Annika; Gibb, Heloise; Izzo, Thiago; Kadlec, Tomas; Kemp, Victoria;
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Abstract

The construction of shelters on plants by arthropods might influence other organisms via changes in colonization, community richness, species composition, and functionality. Arthropods, including beetles, caterpillars, sawflies, spiders, and wasps often interact with host plants via the construction of shelters, building a variety of structures such as leaf ties, tents, rolls, and bags; leaf and stem galls, and hollowed out stems. Such constructs might have both an adaptive value in terms of protection (i.e., serve as shelters) but may also exert a strong influence on terrestrial community diversity in the engineered and neighboring hosts via colonization by secondary occupants. Although different traits of the host plant (e.g., physical, chemical, and architectural features) may affect the potential for ecosystem engineering by insects, such effects have been, to a certain degree, overlooked. Further analyses of how plant traits affect the occurrence of shelters may therefore enrich our understanding of the organizing principles of plant-based communities. This data set includes more than 1000 unique records of ecosystem engineering by arthropods, in the form of structures built on plants. All records have been published in the literature, and span both natural structures (91% of the records) and structures artificially created by researchers (9% of the records). The data were gathered between 1932 and 2021, across more than 50 countries and several ecosystems, ranging from polar to tropical zones. In addition to data on host plants and engineers, we aggregated data on the type of constructs and the identity of inquilines using these structures. This data set highlights the importance of these subtle structures for the organization of terrestrial arthropod communities, enabling hypotheses testing in ecological studies addressing ecosystem engineering and facilitation mediated by constructs. There are no copyright restrictions and please cite this paper when using the data in publications.

Keywords

arthropods; caterpillars; ecosystem engineering; inquilines; insects; leaf galls; leaf rolls; leaf tents; leaf ties; plant constructs; shelters

Published in

Ecology
2022, Volume: 103, number: 4, article number: e3639
Publisher: WILEY

    Associated SLU-program

    SLU Plant Protection Network

    UKÄ Subject classification

    Ecology

    Publication identifier

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.3639

    Permanent link to this page (URI)

    https://res.slu.se/id/publ/116414